FALLACY OF RUSSIAN INFLUENCE ON 2016 ELECTION

The latest “fake news” story circulating around the so-called main stream media is that Russia influenced the 2016 election.  See “Russian 2016 Influence  Operation targeted African
Americans on Social Media” (NYT Dec 17, 2018).   If you still have an unwarranted confidence in “journalists” reporting the truth and only the facts—read the report from the celebrated German news outlets “Der Spiegel” December 19, 2018. .  The publishers of that journal were forced to admit that one of their “award winning journalists  (he was CNN (!) “journalist of the year for 2014”) was fired for making up stories and phony interviews. See Der Spiegel Germany: Der Spiegel says star reported made up materiel, Dec 19, 2018 by Frank Jordans. Spiegel’s revelations are not alone.  There are many cases of egregious journalistic fraud always cropping up. See examples from: NY Times ( fraudster: Jason Blair) Associated Press (fraudster: Chris Newton) Washington Post (fraudster:  Janet Cooke) among many others.   

The idea of Russian Influence is so powerful and appealing to the “Clintonistas” and the Anti-Trump crowd that they simply can't resist the temptation to accept and embroider, elaborate and reiterate  often with their own fraudulent additions.  The concept of journalistic integrity and probity are no where to be found when as story is so appealing to a wide audience. There is no incentive to evaluate the question logically.  If indeed the Russians did have an effect on the election,  such a scenario  would help to remove the stigma of the  embarrassing and devastating election loss of the Clintons to a brash, bloviating, underfunded, novice politician.  Trump turned the tables on the “best qualified ever” candidate, flush with dough, widely supported—a media darling—pollster verified “shoo in candidate”— and the progressives and feministas that supported that campaign.  It would assuage their pain greatly if the fable of “Russian influence” had a real impact.  But even more importantly such a fallacy  would further the political goals of the opposition to delegitimize Mr Trump as the President.  This concept —-so damaging to the nation as a whole— has been the focus of the left:  since election night 2016.  Their aim is to claim that Trump won the White House with the influence  of a “foreign power”—even with no facts of. support for such a claim.  

The total bill for the 2016 election campaigns has been tallied at a shameful $6.5 billion dollars, of that we know that the Trump and Clinton camps spent  nearly $2 billion dollars on their campaigns.  Clinton spent about $1.2 billion and Trump about $700 million.  

It is claimed by the Mueller investigation that the Russians may have been involved in the campaign to the tune of about $1.2 million dollars over a period of about ten months. (Warning: these are only estimates of what a cash poor, very secretive nation may have spent.)  That amount is a paltry sum—by USA standards—where even small scale House and Senate campaigns run up bills in the tens of millions—But indeed, if they did spend that amount, it would literally be a drop in a barrel in comparison to the overall nearly $7 billion amount spent to  influence the overall electorate.  

Considering only the Clinton-Trump 2016 campaign expenditures, the alleged Russian expenditure of $12 million dollars must be compared to the  @ $2 billion  (that is 2,000 million) spent by the C/T campaigns. That is:: 12/ 2000,  or  0.006,  or  about 0.6%  That is: the Russians  allegedly spent six tenths of one percent on their efforts as compared to what the candidates spent . Thus  the total Russian investment in “assaulting” the Clinton-Trump campaigns may have been approximately half a penny spent for every dollar spent by the domestic campaigns.  The media are trying to have us to believe that such insignificant  amounts of spending had an impact on the election of  Mr. Trump.  That is hard to believe.  

THE ALABMA SENATE ELECTION—A SECRET EXPERIMENT? 

But in the Alabama, special Senate race of 2016  to replace Senator Sessions (who was tapped to be President Trump’s first AG) a Democrat-affiliated  political cyber security firm listed as “New Knowledge” carried out a “secret” social media campaign to “enrage Democrats” and “depress turnout” among Republicans so as  to support the candidacy of Democrat, Doug Jones and weaken the campaign of the Republican candidate Judge Roy Moore.  Moore lost to the Democrat in a very tight race. (See: “ Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics (NYT December 19, 2018)  The NYT characterizes the effort as “modest” and “too small to have a significant effect on the race”,  But In that effort, the firm New Knowledge  spent a total of $100,000 dollars compared to the $51million dollars that both candidates spent.  The expenditure by New Knowledge  involved ( 100,000 to 51 million is about 0.2%) is in the same order of magnitude as that of the alleged Russian investment in the Clinton Trump campaigns, yet the Times’ conclusions concerning the impact of the effort are completely reversed.  For the Russian effort; the Times concludes that “Mr. Putin succeeded in delivering the presidency to his admirer, Mr. Trump” (NYT 9-2-18 The Plot to Subvert an Election) and many many more reports with similar conclusions.  This is a fine example for journalism students how biased and politicized even the celebrated NYT can be.   

MORE NUMBERS TO PONDER

The Mueller investigation also revealed that the Russian “assault” included more than “10 million tweets, 1000 You tube videos and 60,000 face book posts”.  That may sound like a lot of social media activity to my readers,  if you didn't t know the following:  

Even in non-election years there are about 6,000 tweets per second, or 500 million tweets per day—that is 200 billion tweets per year.  The 10 million Russian Tweets sent over a ten or twelve month period would be a very small fraction of even one day’s  tweet-total (500 million) and be  lost in the deluge of hundreds of billions of tweets sent every year.  Again another example of a drop in the bucket and likely to have little effect. 

As for Facebook posts of alleged 60,000 posts.  Sixty thousand Russian tweets over the election year is only a tiny fraction of the 1.5 billion posts uploaded EVERY DAY.

As for the alleged 1000 You Tube videos posted over the 2016 election year—they would be lost in the 5 billion videos that are watched on You Tube EVERY DAY!   

Russia, as pay back for the many Obama era discourtesies and attacks against the Russian Bear, may have attempted to influence the US 2016 elections, but thankfully, our system is so diverse, so large, so complex and so widely spread out over a nation of 50 states that actual influence would be very very difficult to attain with the paltry Russia effort claimed by the anti-Trump gang.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT VOTES

If we are looking for improper influences on the election outcome.  I would suggest we look elsewhere.  

What is more likely than Russian influence  is the truly significant numbers of undocumented immigrants illegally voting  in the numerous sanctuary cities and ethnic urban neighborhoods and venues around the nation.  Yes, it is probable that the total may have amounted to as much as the three million that Clinton won over Trump in the popular vote.